Also says atheists are too noisy and loud. What is he, silent?… Read the rest
What is Robert Wright’s basic view?
Feb 14th, 2011 3:57 pm | By Ophelia BensonRobert Wright is reliably vulgar. He shows us how it’s done in a throwaway little piece in The American Prospect – one that’s smug, thought-free and pandering all at once. Rather like a piece of political advertising.
He didn’t like nerds when he was in high school. (No, I bet he didn’t.) Then somebody told him about B F Skinner.
As intellectuals go, Skinner was pretty dismissive of intellectuals — at least the ones who blathered unproductively about “freedom” and “dignity,” the ones he considered insufficiently hard-nosed and scientific.
Look, he said, people are animals. Kind of like laboratory rats, except taller.
And I stopped trying to read it. What a cheap mind, what an impoverished vocabulary, what a stale … Read the rest
News flash: the Taliban violate human rights
Feb 14th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe next stage—may it come soon—will be the realization that the Taliban does not “violate” human rights, but entirely lacks the concept of their existence.… Read the rest
Syria: continued detention of ‘Ali al-‘Abdullah
Feb 14th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonEnglish PEN considers that the journalist is being targeted solely for the peaceful exercise of his right to freedom of expression.… Read the rest
Happy Valentine’s day Salman Rushdie
Feb 14th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonHe’s working on a memoir of his decade in hiding. He’s flourishing, thank you.… Read the rest
The fatwa was 22 years ago today
Feb 14th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonSalman Rushdie is still here, so yaboosucks!… Read the rest
Irish church is tottering
Feb 14th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonIreland has good hope of “becoming like other European countries” where religion is marginal to society. Woot!… Read the rest
Seems, madam? Nay it is; I know not seems
Feb 13th, 2011 4:56 pm | By Ophelia BensonRussell says Aikin and Talisse have portrayed themselves as accommodationists when they seem in fact not to be accommodationists. I thought I would corroborate that – they’re not accommodationists. They say so in their book.
[W]e do not consider ourselves to be accommodationists. We think that the religious believer’s core commitments are simply false; we also hold that adopting religious beliefs often has bad moral consequences. We stand, really, in firm opposition to religious belief and to the very idea of a supreme deity. As subsequent chapters will make clear, we are not just atheists (people who reject religious belief), but antitheists (people who think that religious belief is morally bad. [p 92]
There you go. You’ll never find an … Read the rest
Mubarak used those 18 days to stash the money
Feb 13th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia Benson“They can lose the homes and some of the bank accounts, but they will have wanted to get the gold bars and other investments to safe quarters.”… Read the rest
An accommodation with political Islam?
Feb 13th, 2011 12:29 pm | By Ophelia BensonWhat does Anthony Shadid mean?
There is a fear in the West, one rarely echoed here, that Egypt’s revolution could go the way of Iran’s, when radical Islamists ultimately commandeered a movement that began with a far broader base. But the two are very different countries. In Egypt, the uprising offers the possibility of an accommodation with political Islam rare in the Arab world — that without the repression that accompanied Mr. Mubarak’s rule, Islam could present itself in a more moderate guise.
What does he mean “an accommodation with political Islam”? And why does he couple that with the different subject of a potentially moderate Islam?
Political Islam means theocracy. It means government by Islam and according to sharia… Read the rest
Adam Gopnik on whither the internet books
Feb 13th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonPriest rejoices at plane crash deaths
Feb 13th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonIt’s horrid for the relatives but it’s a wonderful day for the stiffs.… Read the rest
NY Times cheers prospect of political Islam in Egypt
Feb 13th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia Benson“In Egypt, the uprising offers the possibility of an accommodation with political Islam rare in the Arab world.”… Read the rest
We do not evaluate, we demonstrate the diversity
Feb 12th, 2011 3:58 pm | By Ophelia BensonThe whufflings of the science museum are still sticking in my craw, making me irritable and restless and apt to shy at sudden noises. There’s just something about them…
The fifth floor gallery, you should understand, is divided into 3, like ancient Gaul.
2 large areas called Modern Medicine and Before Modern Medicine and a smaller area called Living Medical Traditions which was updated in 2006. Within this section there is a small area devoted to ‘Personal Stories’ which show how people choose to use medical treatments from different traditions.
That’s where the whuffling begins, you see. Another term for whuffling would be PR-speak. Spot the PR-speak. It is in “how people choose to use medical treatments” and it is … Read the rest
An epidemic of woo at universities and museums
Feb 12th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonA “center for integrative medicine”; an obsession with Anthroposophy; a Center for Sprituality and Healing; the Science Museum…… Read the rest
More on the science wooseum
Feb 12th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonAre science museums obliged to present only a scientific, empirical view of the world in their exhibitions? Yes.… Read the rest
CBC Marketplace on superbugs on chicken
Feb 12th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThey tested 100 packages of chicken; 2/3 had bacteria, and most of those were antibiotic-resistant. Be afraid.… Read the rest
Al Jazeera on the post-Mubarak dawn
Feb 12th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia BensonEveryone cried, laughed and embraced in the hope of a new era.… Read the rest
Women of Egypt
Feb 11th, 2011 5:08 pm | By Ophelia BensonYes but it’s worrying that there were so few women in Tahrir Square.
Cairo is notoriously hellish for women. That’s not a good sign for the future. They need to fix that. Women need to get out there and play their part (and that means half, not a bit part); men need to treat them like fellow citizens and equals, not like flowers or prostitutes. Women need to get out there and make sure this isn’t a revolution run by men.
Women need to grab and keep their share of the power and the conversation. If they have their share, it will be that much harder for clerics and Islamists to take over.
Update: a reader sent an … Read the rest
Ian McEwan: change the law to allow choice in dying
Feb 11th, 2011 | Filed by Ophelia Benson“Some of the hardest arguments are coming from religious quarters and I think they really have to be resisted.”… Read the rest